Today I stopped by the Whole Grocer to get a few things after my chiropractor appointment. One guy who works there has this amazing mustache, one of those handlebar things that I just want to stare at because it looks so good on him, (and I'm not a mustache fan generally). As I got into the car, I was thinking, "that mustache really suits him." Then I thought, hold it, maybe it doesn't actually suit him--maybe I just think it does because of some assumption I have about him. Which made me think about assumptions people make based on dress, cars, hobbies, and all kinds of things. It's one of those things that I can't think about too much because I start getting all tangled up in what's real and what isn't, and what "real" means anyway. Kind of like when I stare at a word for a long time and start to forget what it means.
Sometimes I assume the worst, and I'm pleasantly surprised when something isn't as bad as I thought it would be (why does the movie "Titanic" come to mind?). Most of the time, though, I assume the best about people and I'm often disappointed. Isn't that a bummer? D. used to tell me that I was totally gullible, and I know I am.
My good assumptions about people and things often make me blue when they don't work out. Last year I assumed my year of teaching would suck, and it didn't, and that was a nice surprise. This year I assumed it would be easier, and it wasn't, and that made me stressed and depressed. But at least I realized my assumption had been wrong. It's when I don't realize I assumed wrong that I'm in the worst shape, because my sense of reality starts getting all warped and I don't know why. When I interviewed at Macromedia, my future manager told me that people worked hard, but it was 40 hours a week, people didn't want to burn you out, etc., etc. (Now I wonder what planet he was on). I took this comment to heart and it took me a long time to figure out that he was completely misled. But a lot of other people on the team were, too...talking one minute about all of these things they loved to do...until I realized that they didn't actually get to do those things anymore because they were working all the time. (If you love to surf so much, why is your surfboard in your cube at work?) I couldn't figure out why I was so stressed and depressed until I finally realized that it was because the reality of work didn't match the assumptions I had made based on my manager's comments.
All through my career at MACR I had a tough time reconciling what people said from what they actually did, and figuring out who was genuine and who wasn't. Teaching high school has really made me good at knowing what is BS and what isn't, thank goodness. But I still assume too many things, I think.
All of those disjointed thoughts from one mustache. Yeesh.